by Jessica Beck
“I was here all night!” Calvin said. “I was trying to put something together to shift the blame away from me.”
“And onto Greg?” I asked.
“That’s not important,” he said, which was a clear yes in my mind.
“How can I know that’s true?” the chief asked.
“Check the security tapes. I was in my office from six p.m. until five the next morning. I couldn’t have killed Greg Whitmore.”
“We’ll look into it,” he said. “In the meantime, you’ve got some other actions you need to answer for.”
“Call whoever you want. I’ll talk to the FBI, the FDIC, the federal bank examiners, the IRS, anybody. You have to protect me, though. If Joseph finds out that I talked to you, I’ll be dead by nightfall.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be safe enough with me,” Chief Grant said. “Why don’t we continue this conversation back in my office? We can make all of the calls we need to along the way.”
“Do I have to ride in the back of your squad car?” Trinket asked Chief Grant pitifully.
“Right now, that should be the least of your worries,” the chief said.
“At least do me one favor. Don’t handcuff me and walk me out of my own bank as though I were some kind of criminal.”
“Fine,” the chief said reluctantly. It was funny in a sad kind of way. This man had just admitted to the three of us that he was felonious on several different levels, and yet he didn’t want to be treated like a lawbreaker. Just because he hadn’t shot Greg Whitmore didn’t mean that he was a good guy by any definition of the term.
“Thank you for the call,” the chief said to us as he escorted Trinket out of the building, sans handcuffs.
“We were happy to help,” I said.
“Will I see you later?” Grace asked him.
“It really depends on how long it takes to clear up this mess,” he said with a smile.
“I’ll wait up, no matter how long it takes,” she answered gently.
“Then you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Well, at least we can take Calvin Trinket’s name off our suspect list,” I said as Grace and I watched the men drive away in the chief’s squad car.
“That still leaves us Benny, Gwen, and Lori,” she said, “and we can’t find two out of three of them. Any ideas on what we should do next?”
“I say we go talk to Lori again. After all, she shouldn’t be that hard to find,” I suggested as we got into Grace’s car and headed back to April Springs. “She was about to tell me something important. I just know it.”
“Then we need to press her a little harder and see if she cracks. It’s going to be unsatisfying somehow if the bitter estranged wife did it,” Grace said.
“How so?”
“If Lori was the one who pulled the trigger, it’s going to seem more like a case for the police than a pair of amateur sleuths.”
“You know what? I’m fine with that,” I said as we headed back to town. “I just want to see whoever did it caught and punished for their crime. If Chief Grant solves it and makes the arrest without any help from us, it won’t hurt me one little bit. We’re doing our part, and that’s really all that we can do.”
“You’re right. Sorry, I lost track of why we were doing this for one split second. Let’s go talk to Lori,” she said.
Chapter 18
“Hi, Penny,” I said as my friend opened her front door.
“She’s not here, Suzanne, and even if she were, I’m not sure she’d be all that excited about talking to you or Grace. The last time we spoke, she seemed pretty upset.”
“We’re just trying to help,” Grace said. “Can we come in?”
“For a minute or two,” she said as she stepped aside. “What’s the matter, don’t you trust me? Feel free to search the place.”
It was clear that Penny wasn’t that pleased to see us, either.
“Come on. Don’t be that way. You can see that we’re just trying to find out what happened to Greg, can’t you?”
“The truth of the matter is that I’m trying my best not to get involved. After all, you’re all my friends.” She frowned for a moment before she added, “Lori’s got a point, though. She’s torn up about Greg’s murder, and it doesn’t help that they were estranged when it happened. Piled on top of that is the fact that most of the people in town are sure that she’s the one who did it, including the chief of police, evidently, and it adds up to a full plate that nobody wants on their table.”
“You’re right, of course,” I said. “I’m sorry if we’ve made it harder on her than it was already.”
“I know that your hearts are in the right places,” Penny conceded. “I just hate seeing Lori going through so much, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Come on, you’re doing a lot. You’re putting her up, aren’t you? Without you, she wouldn’t even have a place to live.”
Penny shrugged. “It doesn’t feel like I’m doing that much to me.” She glanced at her watch again as she said, “I hate to be rude, but I have to get to the hospital. We’ve had a few nurses suddenly quit, and I’m pulling more shifts than I’m happy about. It will be nice when payday rolls around, but right now I’m not exactly loving it.”
We walked out with her, but before she could drive away, Grace asked her, “Penny, you don’t have an old-fashioned sled lying around by any chance, do you?”
“Grace, it’s been ages since I’ve sledded down a hill. When was the last time we even had enough snow to matter? And why the sudden interest in my winter activities?”
“Who else has asked you lately?” I asked her.
“The chief of police. I’ll tell you what I told him. I used to live on one when I was a kid, but I haven’t ridden it in ages. It made the move with me though, and I had the guys stick it in the garage, along with all of the junk the previous owner left behind. The last I saw of it, it was hanging from the rafters out there,” she said as she pointed behind the house.
“Would you mind if we took a peek while we’re here?” Grace asked.
“Feel free. It’s not locked. Somebody broke into it last week, not that it took a master thief to do it. I haven’t been able to park my car in there since I got the place, and based on how much junk is out there, I never will. Save yourself the trouble, though. Chief Grant already looked, and he came up empty.”
“We might poke around anyway, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“Like I said, suit yourself.” She paused to grin at us. “Speaking of which, keep in mind that we give tetanus shots at the hospital seven days a week.”
“Is it really that bad?” I asked her, smiling back.
“It’s not good. I’ll see you both later,” she said.
“Is it even worth checking out, since Stephen couldn’t find anything?” Grace asked me after Penny was gone.
“Why not? We’re here,” I said as I started walking around the back of the house to where the old garage stood. It looked as though the only thing keeping it erect was a string of termites holding hands, and I could see that Penny had only been halfway joking about the danger of going inside, but I still had to see for myself.
“We don’t even have a flashlight,” Grace reminded me as I examined the busted lock. The truth of the matter was that the lock was just fine; the hasp it was attached to had been ripped off the side of the garage, though. I looked at the wood where it had been attached. There were fresh claw marks on it, as though an angry bear had broken in.
“Someone pried it loose,” I said, taking a photo of it with my phone before I forgot.
“Why would anyone bother breaking in here?” Grace asked as we pulled the big doors open. A swarm of dust mites seemed to greet our arrival, and I could see several large spider webs in the limited sunshi
ne coming in. Beyond the opening, the entire garage was steeped in shadows, and I knew that it was going to be tough to find anything inside without a strong light. I didn’t happen to have one of those police flashlight monstrosities with me, but I did have something on my phone I could use. I turned on the application and moved the bright, though limited, light across the space. It was filled nearly to the rafters with old newspapers, long-abandoned mason jars, discarded Christmas ornaments that hadn’t made the cut this year, watering cans with more holes than any vessel should ever have, yards and yards of rotting canvas, and a host of things I didn’t even recognize.
“Stephen searched the entire place?” Grace asked me in bewilderment. “Did he bring an entire crew with him?”
“Come on. It’s not that bad,” I said as I waved away a few cobwebs that drifted near my face. I wasn’t a big fan of spiders, but at least this one was long gone.
Or so I hoped.
I was about to peel back some of the old canvas when Grace screamed!
“What is it?” I asked as I turned back toward her with my light.
“Something just landed in my hair,” she said, absolutely horrified.
I saw it instantly and reached out and pulled a strand of dry grass from her hair. “It’s okay. It’s just hay. See?”
She looked at it skeptically. “Are you sure that’s all it was?”
I did another search, this one coming up empty. “One hundred percent. You’re good to go.”
“Sorry. Sometimes my imagination gets the better of me.”
“No need to apologize,” I told her. “If this had been Halloween instead of Christmas, I would have reacted exactly the same.”
“No,” she corrected me, “if it had happened to you instead of me, you would have screamed even louder than I just did.”
“I’m not sure that’s entirely possible,” I said with a grin.
“Maybe not,” she answered good-naturedly. “Regardless, I believe I’m finished with this particular task. Feel free to keep searching all you like by yourself, though. I’ll be waiting at the car.”
“No worries,” I said as I went back to the canvas and flipped it open. Before she could go, I said, “Grace, come here.”
“What is it, Suzanne? I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can help you.”
“All I’m saying is that you’re going to want to see this,” I said.
“What did you find, another body?” she asked lightly, trying to break the tension in the air.
It didn’t work. “No, but I believe I just found what was used to move Greg Whitmore.”
I pulled the canvas away and showed her my find. There was something fresh staining the wood of the old sled, and the runners had a glistening layer of rust on them, as if they’d been exposed to the weather recently.
We’d found the sled everyone had been looking for, in the worst place possible for Lori Whitmore.
And that’s when I heard a voice behind me ask, “What exactly do you two think you’re doing in here? I’m calling the police.”
And a split second later, another voice behind her said, “There’s no need for that, since I’m already here.”
Chapter 19
“Let’s everyone just take it real easy,” Chief Grant said as I turned to see him holding his gun on Lori. “Nobody needs to do anything crazy here.”
Lori noticed his gun immediately. “What are you doing? I found these two breaking into Penny’s shed and you’re holding a gun on me?”
“We weren’t breaking in,” I explained. “Penny gave us her permission to search the place. You can call her at the hospital to confirm that if you’d like.”
“What in the world is that doing there?” the chief asked as he stared at the sled I’d just uncovered.
“It could have been easy to miss,” I said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. In fact, it had been so easy to find that I wondered how he could have possibly missed it if he’d even bothered to search the garage at all, but I wasn’t about to point that out to him, whether he was holding a gun at the moment or not.
“I looked there, and it wasn’t in the garage yesterday,” he said definitively.
“Well, it’s here now,” Grace said.
“I certainly didn’t put it there,” Lori said defiantly.
“Why don’t we talk about that in a second?” the chief asked. “How about if everyone steps outside? I’d like to see your hands up in the air.”
“All of us?” Grace asked.
“If you don’t mind.”
I put mine up quickly, and Grace, though unhappy about the situation, did so as well. That left Lori, who was stubbornly refusing to cooperate.
Chief Grant wasn’t having any of that, though. “I’m telling you one last time. If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to treat you as hostile and assume you are armed.”
It was amazing how quickly the woman’s hands shot into the air. “I’m not armed! I wasn’t going to hurt them. I was just shocked to find someone in Penny’s garage. This is all just one big misunderstanding.”
“Then why were you sneaking up on us?” Grace asked her.
“What was I going to do, lock you in? The hasp is broken, remember? I was just trying to see what you were up to. I wasn’t going to do anything.”
Once the chief saw that we were all unarmed, he did a quick but thorough examination of Lori and then me. Reluctantly, he turned to Grace. “Sorry about this.”
“Go on. I might enjoy it, or I would under different circumstances.”
Though he didn’t lay a hand on any of us, it was clear that we weren’t sporting any weapons. Once the police chief was satisfied that none of us were armed, he relaxed and put his own weapon away. “Lori, I’d like it if you’d come down to my office so we could discuss a few things.”
“I’m through talking to you! Are you arresting me?” she asked, clearly made indignant by the turn of events.
“That depends. Are you refusing to have another friendly little chat with me?” he asked her politely. She might have mistaken it for such at any rate, but I knew better. It was a challenge, and if I were in Lori’s shoes, I’d do what the man was asking voluntarily before it became mandatory instead.
The widow must have caught a bit of it as well. “We can talk, but I’m telling you, I’ve never seen that sled before, and I didn’t kill my husband.”
“Then this should be a breeze,” Chief Grant said as he held the back open for her.
“Honestly? Must I ride in the back like some kind of common criminal?”
“You have to sign a waiver to ride up front with me,” he explained.
“Fine. I’ll sign it,” she insisted.
Chief Grant just shrugged. “Sorry, but I’m fresh out. No worries. It’s not a very long ride.” After Lori was in the back of the squad car, the chief put on gloves and collected the sled, stowing it in the back of the squad car before turning to us. “Sorry about that earlier, but I didn’t have much choice, given the circumstances.”
“No worries,” I said to him quickly.
“Well, maybe a few worries,” Grace added as she arched one eyebrow. “Stephen, is she really stupid enough to use that sled to move Greg’s body and then return it to the garage after you searched it?”
He appeared to be pleased that she’d softened her tone with him. “Grace, the amount of stupidity displayed by the common criminal would blow your mind.”
“What are you going to do with her?” I asked him.
The chief of police did his best to grin, but there wasn’t an ounce of warmth in it. “Just like I said. We’re going to have ourselves a little chat and see what develops from there.”
Once they were gone, Grace looked at me and asked, “What do you think?”
“I don
’t know at this point. It’s entirely possible that Lori did it, but I’m not sure that I’m finished with Benny and Gwen yet.”
“Then I suggest we find them and move forward,” Grace said.
Only it turned out that there was no need for us to do anything else when one of them found us before we could leave Penny’s in search of our last two suspects. We’d stepped back inside to have one last look around when we heard someone else approaching.
“I just saw the police chief driving away with Lori in the backseat,” Benny said breathlessly as he joined us in the garage. “He told me you both were back here. Did Lori really kill Greg? I don’t believe it.”
“We’re not sure, either,” I told him. “Why are you here, Benny? You stood us up today!”
“I had to. I’ve been out looking for Gwen since we spoke last,” he said, looking behind his shoulder as he answered.
“I’m sure that she’s long gone,” I told him.
“That’s what you think. She’s after me. The woman has gone completely psycho! She killed Greg, and now she’s after me!”
Chapter 20
“What makes you say that?” I asked him. His paranoia was catching. I wasn’t sure how safe we were standing there in that garage, where it was easy for someone, especially someone crazy, to sneak up on us.
“I didn’t want to say anything at the bank today, but she came to my house last night,” he said. “She kept ranting and raving about how I killed Greg! I kept assuring her that I didn’t do it, but she wouldn’t believe me. She said that I might be able to fool the police but that she knew! The woman was insane! I managed to slam the door in her face, but she yelled that she’d be back, and the next time she’d have a gun. I decided that I needed to find her and convince her that I was innocent before she could do something stupid.”